I believe I have original, worthwhile thoughts, but I never seem to arrive at them unless another person helps me along. I believe I am a good friend, but only by my friends coming to me and then letting me tell them they can stand on their own. I try to be so independent and courageous and original and then I fail over and over to do anything on my own. Sometimes all I want is my perfect knight on a white steed to ride up and take all my troubles away. But I can't even have that fantasy because as soon as I imagine it I rip it to shreds. Such a thing doesn't exist for one. For two I would never be able to enjoy such a life. For three I would live a life of no meaning, no growth, no pain, no Truth. I would have no struggles and no goal to achieve.
We all wish for the perfect answer to all our problems that requires us to give nothing of ourselves. And I think we all realize how such an answer would ruin us. I think we all know just how worthless a perfect life would be if we had no problems to overcome. If we have no goals to strive for, then how pointless it, life, all is.
Which leaves me in an endless trap that I see no way out of. The endless struggle of life with no answer. If there were an answer there is only the fear of finding it. But if you fear finding it then there is no reason to seek it. With no reason to seek it, there is no point to life. If life is not about seeking answers, then it has no direction, no worth, to achieve. This cannot be escaped by saying you find your own answers, because that falls victim to the same logic. If you make your own answer, then you have nothing more to strive for. But stopping short of making your own answers doesn't avoid the innate contradiction either.
So what then?
Are we doomed to wander in this endless trap? Can answers be worthless? Can seeking be worthless? Can life without seeking be worth anything? What is left for us then?
Nothing.
Is life meaningless? What a classic question.
No, our hope lies in trusting that we can seek the answers forever and never find them. Always be making partial progress, but never achieving the goals we set.
Pitiful isn't it? But that means that the journey is enough. And it is enough. I hope it is enough, because in times like these I am no longer sure. I just have to trust that my memory of how sure I was in brighter times in my life is true and that the journey is enough and always will be enough. All that changes is my certainty. Sometimes I know it to be true, and some times, like now, I do not know what to think.
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As I think, there is another way of saying what I have already. We can set goals, achieve them, and set new goals. Life cannot be measured by the height you have achieved, as resting on goals achieved can only be temporarily worthwhile. Life can only be measured by the speed at which you rise to the goals you do choose. Whether or not you achieve them (or how high you began or reached or have been) matters little. It's not unusual for minor distinctions to be incredibly important. The goals themselves, while important, do not matter in the end. It can only be the continued attempt to reach them that matters. That would seem pointless, to some perhaps, but sometimes it seems as clear and reasonable as day to me. However it all depends on what viewpoint you are looking at. In terms of history, the unfeeling universe, and objectivity, it is the absolute goals that matter, but for humans and their lives ingrained in the temporal passing, value is not in the absolute but the relative rate of achievement.
I am reminded of Camus essay on the Myth of Sisyphus.
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